Final Lesson on the Rhodesian Bush War

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Jesse Kelly Show Second hour, another hour of The
Jesse Kelly Show on a wonderful Tuesday, and do not forget.
You can email us Jesse at jessekellyshow dot com. We
are about to finish finally the Rhodesian bush War tonight.
I have no worthly idea how long it's going to

(00:21):
take me. It might not even take me an hour.
It probably won't, but who knows. And then once we're
done with that, that'll wrap that up, and then we'll
move back on to politics or remember, if you missed
any of the previous four parts, they're all available on Iheartspotify, iTunes,
go download the podcast. I give all the background and

(00:41):
stuff like that, and always keep something else in mind
whenever we do history on this show. If there is
a topic that intrigues you, I just want to stress this.
There is a topic that intrigues you, I want to
encourage you that I can't possibly present all the interesting,

(01:06):
cool parts of it to you. Meaning, if I like
the Rhodesian buschwart's about to be five hours basically of content,
if you're fascinated by it. It can be common to
think this, and I know because I used to do this.
It can be common to think, Okay, well I got it,
Jesse already told me about it. No, you're getting the

(01:30):
parts of it that are uniquely intriguing to me. And
of course you have an overview now, a basic understanding
of it. But I only have a basic understanding of it.
If there are parts of it that intrigue you, any
parts of it, go read or listen to podcasts or

(01:51):
even audio books, like Jewish producer Chris does. If there's
a subject that fascinates you that maybe we've introduced you
to on this show, dig into it more yourself. There's
so much more out there. I had to learn this myself.
I'd read one book on something and think, Okay, I
got it. That's it. No, no, no, no, no, go

(02:11):
read ten books on it. There's all kinds of different
perspectives and angles and details and more things that will
come to you if you're fascinated by it. Dig into it,
all right. So we got this email Jesse, I'm really
enjoying the history of the Rhodesian Bush War. We got
a bunch of these. I'm glad you enjoying it. At
the beginning of the century, I completed MSG training and

(02:33):
was headed to my first post. By the way, MSG
is Marine Security Guard. Those are the guys who guard
our embassies. The United States Marines guard the embassies. Anyway,
headed to my first post, Zimbabwe. I had no idea
where it was. To complicate matters, the schoolhouse map was
from nineteen seventy nine, and I had no idea that

(02:54):
it had been Rhodesia. The country was amazing, but I
arrived just as the economy was collapsing. Not to give
it away, one of the local guards told me that
he had fought alongside Robert Mugabi. I'll get to him
in a bit. When I asked him what Mugabi was like,
he gave me this haunting stare and simply said he

(03:14):
is a cruel man. A very telling statement from his
former comrade. Anyhow, keep up the good work. I love
your show. Simplify. Yeah, I'll let the rest of that
thing go. So now I mentioned yesterday where we are now,
I won't recap it for you again. I've already done

(03:36):
too much of that. Nineteen seventy four Mozambique, the country
east of Rhodesia. They had been friendly to Rhodesia because
they were controlled by the Portuguese. Mozambique falls, Portugal pulls out.
They say, hey, you can have it now. Mozambique is
openly hostile to Rhodesia and the communist terrorists. They move

(04:00):
into Mozambique in a huge way. Gigantic training camps are
now open in Zambia and Mozambique. The Soviet Communists are
pouring money and munitions and training into these areas. The Chinese,
the Chicoms are pouring money and munitions and training into

(04:21):
these areas. Rhodesia has its enemies amassing on its borders.
It has officially one friend left on the planet, and
that friend is South Africa. South Africa kind of on
the southwestern border of Rhodesia and South Africa was half

(04:45):
their air force planes. South Africa would send men to help.
But here is part of the problem with diplomacy. I
shouldn't say problem. It's just the way the world works.
I shouldn't even call it a problem. Let's be adults here.
It's the way that we're world works. Countries like the
United Nations, or countries like the United States, Organizations like

(05:06):
the United Nations, countries like the UK, they're not stupid.
They understand that Rhodesia is still held up, at least
in part by the South Africans. Well, that creates a
problem for South Africa because South Africa is not powerful
enough to withstand America, the UN, the UK. So they

(05:31):
start leaning hard on Rhodesia to change. And remember the
change they want as you read it, as you dig
into it, the change they've always wanted is one man,
one vote, one man, one vote. Well, that would mean
the Europeans would essentially have no power whatsoever, and the
various African tribes would take over all positions of government.

(05:55):
Now pause, by this time, that has our already happened
in several countries around Africa. And every place that happened, genocide, poverty,
war and misery has followed. The world knows. Everybody knows.
If you hand it back over, they're going to murder

(06:18):
everybody and destroy every ounce of progress and it's going
to be a disaster. And the Rhodesians know this as well.
Remember we're talking a country that got going in eighteen ninety,
not that old. We're less than one hundred years old
on this country here, and these Europeans managed to build

(06:38):
it into the wealthiest, most prosperous country in Africa, modern
paved roads, the works, and they're looking around at every
other country in Africa fall and saying we're not giving
it back. You're outside of your mind. But the idea
was one man, one vote. Now, sorry, folks on Paul

(07:00):
for a moment. We're going back to combat in a minute.
Don't worry about remembering these details. I've given you too many.
There's a lot of details in the story. The head
of Rhodesia is Ian Smith. Was his name, Ian Smith.
He was trying and obviously failed in the end. And
the different things you read will give you different opinions

(07:21):
of Ian Smith. I need to clarify that. But no
matter which way you shake it, he was trying really
hard to work with Britain on an agreement of some
kind that would allow Rhodesia to remain Rhodesia while maybe
giving Britain enough of what they wanted to kind of

(07:41):
back off. Hey, back off? Now? Why is he so
desperate for them to back off? Remember I told you
before that Rhodesha was so wealthy and so prosperous that
people were pouring in. Other Africans were pouring in looking
for opportunity, looking for work. Europeans were pouring in. Hey,
this is a great place, fertile ground, modern, let's go

(08:03):
have an adventure. Let's go, let's go to Rhodesia. By
this point in the story, we're at the late seventies.
By this point in the story, that has changed. Now
farmers are being slaughtered. Now, if you get caught out
in the hinterlands by the terrorist groups with the terrorist camps,

(08:23):
they'll kill you, rape you, torture you. Now you had
to have an armored convoy. Let's say you and me,
throw your fam in the car. I'll throw my fam
in the car. We're gonna go camp in this weekend.
We're gonna go out to the hinterlands. They'd call it
the bush. We're gonna go out to the bush and
we're gonna go fishing this weekend. You can't do that

(08:44):
anymore in Rhodesia, unless, of course, you have a friend
in the army, because it requires a military convoy to
drive out to the hinterlands. Think of it this way.
Salisbury is the main city. It wasn't only Salisbury, but
I'll make it easy. Salisbury the main city. Consider Salisbury
your fortress of safety. It's four to five fortress of safety.

(09:06):
That's fine. You leave that fortress, you might die. You
go out to any of the rural lands in Rhodesia,
you might die, and you might die ugly. Well. Remember,
Rhodesia may have had an elite military, but still it
was not a military. The country itself, Rhodesia was not

(09:27):
a military. It was a country, a country made up
of people of men, women, young, old school children, churches.
It was a civilization. And people who had previously come
to Rhodesia in search of opportunity and adventure. They didn't

(09:50):
want to live in a place where a landmine might
incinerate your whole family when you were driving out for
a picnic after church on a Sunday afternoon. Things have
gotten so bad and Rhodesia Europeans are leaving, thousands of them.
They're done. The country is coming apart. We'll continue in

(10:11):
a moment Jesse Kelly's Show on a Fantastic, Fantastic Tuesday.
You can email us Jesse at Jesse kellyshow dot com.
Back to our Rhodesian Bush War history. Now we need
to pause on Rhodesia specifically for a moment, and we
need to focus on the terrorists or gorillas, depending on
which side you're on. Here. As I told you before,

(10:32):
there are two very very different communists terrorist groups, and
they're different because they come from the two different African
tribes that had previously controlled Rhodesia. I won't bother with
naming the tribes again, that's just the detail. It doesn't matter.
You can go dig into it. The tribes are known

(10:52):
as different things anyway, but two different tribes historical hatred, slavery, slaughter,
historical hatred. Well, one of those tribes backed by the Soviets,
the other tribe backed by the Chinese. But wait, there's more.

(11:14):
Communists are horrible, aren't they. They're even horrible to each other.
You see, there's actually an internal communist revolt that kind
of slows things down for the Soviet back communists because
they end up having their leaders arrested and tortured, and
then they have to arrest and torture the guy. It's
don't My whole point in this was don't think that

(11:37):
it's all hunky dory with the communist terrorists who are
setting up these camps outside of Rhodesia, and in some
cases in Rhodesia. It is not now back to being
in Rhodesia. The Rhodesians are running out of stuff, and
it really is. It's amazing how how how they were

(11:57):
able to fix planes and fix helicopter with essentially what
they had on hand. They're patching it all together. I
was reading one thing from a guy. He was Rhodesian
light infantry, and he talked all the time about how
he would have to stitch up his own combat gear
because the gear they had was so worn out and

(12:18):
frayed that you couldn't even store anything in it. Remember,
these guys are toughest nails. Their military was excellent, but
they're running out of things, and they're also hurting for
man power. Remember yesterday what I mentioned fire force. What
it was Fireforce were these different quick reaction forces in

(12:39):
the country and they would they would find terrorists, they'd
get load up in the heroes, load up in the planes,
take off towards the terrorists, try to surround them, envelop
them and kill them. All sounds great, worked really well,
was a genius idea, But the number of terrorists is
seemingly endless. The number of Rhodesians is not. They don't

(13:04):
have the man power to suffer a broken ankle. These
fire force units were supposed to be one hundred men,
one hundred and twenty men. They were always going out
with seventy. People were dying, people were getting hurt. And again,
this is a tiny portion of society. The man power
is limited. So let's discuss somebody briefly here, because he's

(13:29):
going to matter. In fact, the email brought him up already,
Robert Mugabi. People who have any understanding of history of
the region will know the name. Of course, certainly older
people will know the name Robert Mugabi. Spoiler alert. He's
the head of one of the communist groups, the Chinese backed,
actually the Chinese backed communist group that will eventually conquer Rhodesia.

(13:54):
Remember that he is already a monster, a butcher. He
is known as a butcher. He has advanced Chinese training,
not just on military stuff, on insurgencies, on everything. He
is somebody widely known to be a bad, bad person.
I mentioned Ian Smith's negotiations with the British government, how

(14:18):
they're trying to negotiate some sort of an agreement where
the Rhodesians can the Europeans essentially can retain control, but
of course with increased African representation and things like that.
And one of the things the Rhodesians were passionate about
was under no circumstances can Robert Mugabi take over this country.

(14:40):
This was something well known even with the other terrorists,
the Soviet back terrorists, even they knew, Oh, Robert Mugabi,
that would probably be bad. He definitely seems like a
genocidal madman who will kill and torture everybody. We should
probably avoid that. Now, what kind of things are the

(15:01):
Rhodesians doing. Some of these things you may love, some
may not. I mentioned yesterday. They're putting up their own
land mines, lots of them. They are draining the rural
areas because now that the Communists are able to come
into Rhodesia, in the rural areas, the Communists are recruiting Rhodesians,

(15:24):
Black African Rhodesians, recruiting them from inside the country. And
by the way, because they're communists, it's not always lovely
recruit recruitment recruitment with US signing bonuses and candy canes
for everybody. They operated in much the same way the
Vietcong operated. They would walk into your African village and

(15:45):
pull the village elder in the village leader and ask
him for twenty young men to join the communist cause.
And if he said no, they gather the whole village
around and they carve his guts out while he's still
alive in front of everybody, rape all the women, and
chop people's head off. It's horrible. It's just human rights
abuses like you can't possibly imagine. Well, now this is

(16:07):
making a bad problem even worse for the Rhodesians. They're
having internal problems, and so they start doing things like
I already mentioned, draining these areas. They're not letting people
stay there anymore. Now they're having things like curfews where
if they catch you out after a certain hour, you die. Period. Well,

(16:28):
what's going to happen? Then you're going to eventually kill
innocent people, and then that's going to make international news.
They're just swimming against the tide. So they eventually do
pull off one of the cooler military things I've ever
heard in my life that was awesome and wonderful in
a complete and total disaster. I will explain what that

(16:51):
is in a moment. Jesse Kelly show on a Fantastic
Tuesday going over the final part of the Rhodesian bush War.
If you miss to any of the others, iHeart spotify iTunes.
So by now I mentioned already the Rhodesians are having
to take extreme measures, and keep in mind, I don't
want to present them as fluffy and cuddly. They're doing

(17:14):
some torturing themselves. They are, and they're doing things that
would make you probably squeamish. For instance, they're selling cigarettes,
clothing to the communist gorillas that's poisoned, poisoning them. These
are the kinds of things they're doing. Now I mentioned

(17:35):
Mozambique and how big of a problem Mozambique was. These
huge communist training camps were in Mozambique. Now there's a unit,
and I read a wonderful book. Three SIPs of Gin
is the name of the book. Three SIPs of Gin
is the name of the book. Three SIPs of Gin
is the name of the book. Anyway, about this unit

(17:59):
I've mentioned before, called the Cellas Scouts or Selu Scouts.
They were in elite unit, as I mentioned, more than
half of them, and that's going to matter for Operation
Elan's purposes. More than half of them were Black Africans.
Many of those Black Africans were actually recruits. They had

(18:19):
been communists and then they got recruited and they joined
the cellas scouts. This unit did more things that I
could ever lay out than I even know. I mean,
I've only read a few books on the subject. They
were always tracking people. They were doing they were posing
as warlords, they were poisoning cigarettes. They were the clandestine

(18:41):
find a way to find them and kill them unit,
and they came up with an operation. Uh gutsy is
just one way you would describe it. You see, there
was this large communist training camp in Mozambique. Here is
what happened. These sellers scouts knew when the troops would

(19:06):
gather for formation. I believe there were a couple thousand
troops when they would gather for formation in this space
in Mozambique. Here's what they did. They gathered up in
a bunch of armored cars. Armored cars designed armored cars
that were the same cars that the terrorists would be using.

(19:27):
Keep in mind cars that had gigantic machine guns on them.
I won't break down the details of these machine guns. Also,
cars that it's hard to see inside an armored car,
is it not. These Sellu scouts used their black members
and they put terrorist uniforms on them, so they looked

(19:50):
like the communists terrorists, and those were the ones who
were the drivers and the turret gunners, of course, And
they drive up to the gate of this communist training
camp in Mozambique while all the terrorists are on the
parade ground for formation, and of course they get stopped

(20:11):
at the gate. The communist said, wow, what are you
doing here? And they pull that thing you've seen in
the movies a thousand times. They say, I'll have you arrested.
What are you doing stopping me? You peon, I'm general whatever,
I'm colonel whatever. I'll cut your hands off. Of course
it's some I'm sure it's some twenty year old idiot
kid at the gate. Well, sorry, you guys, go ahead.

(20:35):
They drive these armored vehicles into the base. They are
outnumbered on this base sixty to one. They are not
only outnumbered sixty to one. May I repeat myself, they
are in a totally different country. They are in Mozambique,
they are not in Rhodesia. They pull the armored vehicles

(20:59):
with the heavy machine guns onto the parade ground. The
troops who are on the parade ground, remember there's a
couple thousand of them, They want to know what's going on.
They began to gather around the armored vehicles, at which
point in time the signal is given and the heavy

(21:21):
machine guns open fire on the defenseless terrorists on the
parade ground and they start chopping these guys up like cord.
They slaughter the African terrorists, no deaths on behalf of

(21:43):
the cellas scouts. When they've done what they can do,
they peel rubber in their armored cars and drive out
of the base all the way back to Rhodesia. One
of the most bold, brilliant military actions I have ever
heard of in my entire life. A humongous success right

(22:05):
and of course widely celebrated in Rhodesia. But as we
have discussed, there's always a political aspect to war. Always.
I don't like it, you don't like it. Kill the
enemy is all that matters, but that's not real life.

(22:27):
Operation Eland as it is called, was a humongous military success,
but at this point in history, it is a diplomatic,
a political disaster. Rhodesia is already coming apart. It is
politically on the outs with the rest of the world,

(22:49):
and Jimmy Carter's President of the United States of America.
Operation eland or deifies the entire planet. Think about it.
A bunch of unarmed Africans. And of course the Communists
say they were all refugees. They don't say any of
these guys were terrorists or soldiers or gorillas. They act

(23:11):
like the Rhodesians rode in and mowed down a bunch
of women and children. Now what's the one friend Rhodesia
has left on the planet South Africa. After Operation eland
the world comes down so hard on South Africa. South

(23:32):
Africa says, hey, Rhodesia, we're out. You are on your own.
And they leave, and they take their men, and they
take their planes and they bail. Now it's over, I

(23:53):
mean at this exact moment. It doesn't end, but this
ends Rhodesia. They are a land locked country where the
modern countries of the world have declared them to be
the enemy, and physically every country now on their border

(24:14):
is hostile to them. Not only no more trade, most
of the countries on their border are harboring and training
and supplying terrorists pouring into their country. Now they know
it's over, the only question is what do you do?
So they came up with a couple different plans. There

(24:37):
was one plan. One plan was to essentially leave the
country and burn down and destroy all the infrastructure on
the way out, essentially fight a rearguard action down to
South Africa where you'll leave and just burn but you know,
fill up, put concrete in every toilet, rip up every street,
leave nothing for the Africans. But what happens is they

(25:04):
agree to have an election, a one man, one vote
style election the Brits had been pushing for from the
very very beginning. Well, how do communists operate elections here
in the United States of America? How'd that twenty twenty
election go? How do you think Robert Mugabi and his

(25:26):
political party, how exactly do you think they're going to
handle an election in Rhodesia. Yeah, let me go ahead
and spoil it for you, Robert Mugaby with some uh
shady dealings, if you will takes power in Rhodesia. Now
we'll just do a couple more sentences on this, thirty

(25:48):
more seconds, because I think you already know how it goes.
From here. It doesn't go very well. All right, hang on,
what is the Jesse Kelisha, Oh, final segment of the
Jesse Kelly Show on this hour. Don't worry, we still
have an entire other hour. It's just going to be
our final segment on the Rhodesian Bush War. Fast forward.

(26:12):
We finally have peace in Rhodesia. Peace doesn't go very well.
Robert Mugabe and his communists take over the government. Now
I need to clarify. I said there were a couple
different plans. The Europeans had. One of those plans actually
involved now performing a military coup and killing them all.

(26:34):
But they decided to set those plans aside and they
walked away. But not all Europeans walked away. And I know,
given what we're going to know here in a moment,
that probably sounds bonkers. Hey, some angry communists, some murderous time,
it just took over. Why would you stay? Let's remember
these are real people, And let's remember you might be

(26:56):
on your third generation in your family fall in Rhodesia.
Maybe your grandfather came here eighty years ago. It's easy
looking back down. It's easy for you, it's easy for
me to say, hey, you got to get out. That
may be everything you have it maybe everything you've ever known.
I mean, you might be fifty five years old. What

(27:17):
are you gonna do? Go start over. A lot of
Europeans chose to stay, and Robert Mugabi, who understood the
world was watching him now, initially tried to play it
off as if he was just going to be a
pretty fair guy. Still allowed a few Europeans to be

(27:40):
represented in the government, didn't immediately start the purges. But
he's a communist. What do communists do with power? Do
you think they're different than our than our communists? What
do they do? They do two things. They reward their
friends and they punish their enemies. Robert Mugabi begins to
fill up the government met with committed communists. Robert Mugabi

(28:03):
also he believes he has two sets of enemies in
the country, not just the white Europeans. Remember those Soviet
backed gorillas, the Soviet back terrorists. Remember how they were
from a different tribe than Mugabi. Mugabi starts to get

(28:24):
a little bit stronger in his rhetoric of these people
are the enemy. These people are the reason things aren't
working well, because of course, surprise, surprise, things start to
fall apart. The second you hand the country to the communists.
Robert Mugabi starts to genocide the opposing tribe. Robert Mugabi
starts to do things like this. Farmer farmer or white

(28:50):
European farmer is well aware that white European farms have
been attacked, few of them lately. Anyway, farmer feels that
his family may be in danger. He may be in danger,
so he sends his wife and children into town, into
Salisbury or somewhere like that, where he thinks they'll be safe.

(29:11):
And then he wakes up one night to find his
home is surrounded by gangs with machetes and axes, gangs
that have been sent there by Robert Mugabi. He calls
his mother, tells mom what's happening, essentially tells her goodbye.
His mother, as any mother would, hangs up the phone

(29:32):
a bit distraught and calls the police. Except who do
you think controls the police? Now? In what is now Zimbabwe?
Who do you think controls the police? Remember what happens
in our big cities now with these big city police chiefs.
The police don't even answer the phone. That man ends

(29:57):
up being hacked to death, shot to death inside of
his home. This became an extremely common tale as Zimbabwe
slowly but surely descended into what all communist countries descend into,
a one party state full of torture, death, genocide, and

(30:23):
now the Jewel of Africa, the wealthiest, most prosperous country
in Africa, now makes the Jesse Kelly Show Crappiest Country
in the World tournament. All it took was twenty thirty
years of communist rule to destroy everything civilized people had built.

(30:48):
It is an insanely fascinating tale, a sad tale, if
we're being honest, isn't it sad? There are people who
are passionate about Rhodesia. Keep in mind, I remember I
teased yesterday that we've got a guy who was there.
He's going to actually join us tomorrow. We've reached out

(31:10):
to him courtesy of a listener of the show, actually
a Navy seal listener of the show, which is really cool.
Center five Brother Navy Seal listener of the show knows
a veteran of the Rhodesian Bush War, and he's going
to join us tomorrow. Probably just be a brief little thing.
I just want to touch base with him on it.
I want, I want to hear from him. I haven't
talked to him yet. Jewish producer Chris As I haven't.
I'm going to talk to him. We'll just get his
perspective on it. But are there are Rhodesians, many of

(31:33):
them still alive today, who remember it and it is
such a point of sorrow. And there are people who
are just passionate about it, who think about it, and
it's just such a point of sorrow. And I really
thought it would be an appropriate lesson for where we
are and what happens if you don't stop communist insurgents

(31:56):
from taking over your country, from occupying the positions of power,
they will bring nothing but death and misery in the end.
And who is better off? Now? Who's better off? I'd
love to ask the United Nations and Britain, in all
these countries that helped doom Rhodesia, are you proud of

(32:17):
yourself right now? There was a wonderful place, not just
for white Europeans, for Black Africans, employment, civilization, modern medicine,
and you had to rip it away from them with
your race activism, and now people starve to death, regularly

(32:37):
living below the poverty line, hospitals that don't have any medicine.
That's what happens. A very very sad tale, but a
very fascinating tale. And like I said in the beginning,
we're going to get back to politics now. Like I
said in the beginning, if this fascinates you, and according
to your emails, it most certainly does. If this fascinate you,

(33:01):
go pick up a book on it, an audiobook on it.
I mentioned a couple books that I read just because
they were my favorites. But there are so many. There
are fascinating YouTube channels. People have done podcasts with these veterans.
You can go so much more in depth than I
went into. I gave you the thirty thousand foot view.

(33:22):
If this war, If this conflict fascinates you, look into it.
I didn't even go into all the mercenaries that came
over and fought with them, including Americans, Vietnam veterans, all
kinds of people fascinating. Anyway, let's talk about a healthcare problem.
We may have some emails letting juveniles out of prison
and more. Thanks